Green Thong
by PeechTao -Ezra Cross
Summary: Kato and the Hornet take on a Chinese Tong attempting to sell Meth in LA to a local drug Lord. With Kato going AWOL, britt has to uncover what this Tong's connection is with his friend's past, before Kato's uncontrol gets them killed. or at least, shot!


Here is a short story inspired by the Green Hornet movie, set about a year into the future of Kato and Britt. Be kind, please review. I would put this in as chapters but I'm already finishing a chaptered book now, so this will all go in at once. Thanks for reading!

**Green Thong**

**Book 1**

_PeechTao_

**Isla Cucina, Tuesday 10:30pm**

I wonder often over what it is I should be writing. As it is, this is just a scrap of paper scribbled on at a restaurant table while my food goes cold. But I got to write something. I run a news paper for crap's sake.

I'm sitting five table's left, three tables back from Kato. Neither of us are masked. Casey is across from Kato. Parker, the new DA and a recent friend of the Green Hornet and myself, is beside me. All of us have our eyes on one thing. Chairman Chou. Head of the most notorious Tong in China and a recent headache to both the police and the Hornet. He's made quite a mess of my late edition papers of late, stealing the limelite from my colorful alter ego. So, we sat spread out across the restaurant and only partially involved in our conversations. I had considerable sympathy for Casey. This Chou had gotten to Kato somehow, somewhere, in the past. The last thought on Kato's mind was making polite conversation with Casey.

When he first heard Chou was in town, he ran off without another word and didn't come back for five or six days. When he finely did show up he had a black eye, a nearly broken nose, and all around looked like someone walloped his head with a car door.

Oh, and one of the Beauty's was totaled. The steering wheel and left rear door was never found. Now, that car has been shot at, blown up, and set on fire. I think we lost a door once when it was sheered off by a semi truck in a high speed chase after it had been shot with anti-aircraft rounds on the highway. I asked Kato what happened. He wasn't very forthcoming with info on the situation. I let it drop. So long as he didn't jeopardize what we were doing now, today, with Chou I didn't care what he ended up doing. But something in the pit of my gut was telling me this was not going to go that easy.

Ever.

"Britt? You got to eat something. People are about to start staring. Scratch that, they are staring. I think the manager's going to come over and ask if there's a rat in you steak or something."

Leave it to Parker to keep me on topic. I stopped scribbling for now and looked around us. A few stray pairs of eyes here and there were facing in our directions. An old maid in a corner was eyeing us, wondering if we'd take notice of her newly dyed hair or the ancient string of pearls decorating her wrinkled neck. Another set belonged to a couple politicians. One waved a cigar-holding hand at us. Always good politics to make nice with the press. And as far as LA is concerned, I _am _the press. Others were just random passersby, interested in what all the important people were looking down on.

I snorted, taking a sip from my now warm beer. I grimaced and sat it back on the table.

Parker eyed me, then across the room to Kato and back. "He's looking tense. Think he'll be all right through this?"

"Hmm?" I asked turning my attention to Parker. "What?"

Parker jerked his head, indicating my partner.

I sighed. "I don't know. I don't get what his deal is. Something Japanese I bet with this thong guy."

The DA gave me one long gaze. He was trying to figure out if I messed up my words on purpose or not. In the end he didn't say anything. I'm not sure what her surmised but he smiled. "How's that listener working?"

"Like a dream." I said, adjusting the earpiece hidden like a ring in my ear. "Lot of interference when I chew. Should have gone for the soup instead."

He passed over his French onion soup without me offering. I tossed him half a grin. He knew I was starving. For one, I always was starving. It was my fault for burning the candle at both ends and then some. I was like a frickin' two sided candelabra. First Mike's crawling all over me for Hornet details, Case is bucking for another raise after purchasing a new car (because maybe I accidentally destroyed hers with a rocket, that's up to debate), Chou's in town making my life Hell, Kato's gone all Lone Ranger on me, AND I've got the new DA buzzing around me like a . . . like a . . . I don't know like a Green Hornet I guess. He wanted a piece of the action like a regular masked vigilante himself. I'm not sure what prompted me to letting him in on the game, but something said to trust him. That and he came to me in the middle of the night and told me flat out he already knew. I never found out how, but Parker was like that. Mysterious. It helped in our line of work.

As he started carving into my steak I adjusted the hearing piece to get a better listen on the whisperings between Chou and his latest scumbag diner partner. All that I've gather thus far between partial Chinese and Louisiana lined English was somebody was shipping something big on Thursday at some location I couldn't quite figure out. They wrote that part down and exchanged the location via napkin. I watched the white paper disappear into Louisiana's back jean pocket.

"How good a pick-pocket are you?" I asked Parker.

He shrugged. "Never did any time for it if that's what you're asking. Why? Exchange made?"

I nodded very little.

"Fantastic. That means we can nail that guy for whatever it is he's here for if you ever let me know what their saying."

"We got to get that note." I said, almost ignoring him. My eyes darted over to Kato. To my surprise Case was standing. She was yelling, making a scene. I half stood from my chair wondering what in the world was going on. Between my ear piece on Chou and Kato's Chinese exclamations I only half heard what she was saying.

"God, you never listen to anything but yourself! Just . . . you and your fancy job and shove . . ." she picked up her glass of water and doused my driver with it before stalking away on her hot red heels. She clicked passed the DA and me, never sparing a glance. Half way out the door she ran headlong into Louisiana and nearly knocked herself on her backside. Her hot, tight, little backside.

_Focus, Reid! _I had to warn myself. I watched Louisiana right her on her heels, she muttered a false apology, batter her long eyelashes and she stalked out the door.

Parker leaned across the table to me. His grin spread ear-to-ear. "I like your girl, Reid. She's darn near criminal."

I nodded, watching Kato rush out after Casey. "Yeah. She's hot too." I said.

**Home, Thursday 1:35am**

I had twenty minutes to sleep. Actually, nineteen minutes and thirty-five seconds . . . thirty-four . . .thirty-three . . .

I laid on the sofa bed, staring at the back of my eyelids with the kaleidoscopes of black, blue, and burnt red dancing under my shades. This was killing me, waiting for the time to move. I knew if I didn't try to sleep now, I wouldn't get another chance until after tomorrow night. A full seventy-two hours without sleep of any kind. Well, maybe that's not true. I did fall asleep in my coffee for about ten minutes at the office. Axford thought I was up all night working on layouts for the morning. Sure, Mike, that's exactly what it was.

After meeting up at the mansion with Casey, Parker, and Kato the night before, we got together everything we gathered from Chou's meeting. Apparently the shipment involved was some kind of new Chinese cut crystal meth. It was about five times the potency and lethality of the current LA brand. Chou was set to make a fortune in first payments and Fox Pulver (aka Louisiana) was set to accept the deliveries and distribute them as he saw fit. Supply and demand. The drop off point was, as excepted, an isolated pier in Los Angeles Harbor. Kato and I spent the entire day locating the specific location in the mess of shipping containers and red tape that was the harbor inlet. At last we found the place, marked it on the GPS and planned on swooping in tonight to intercept the drugs as Kato and the Green Hornet. Eventually some of the drugs would get sold to undercover cops and they would end up with Parker and his trace department.

That and I called Parker and told him all about our little party. He'd send a squad of cops after an "annonymous" Green Hornet tip later.

For now, I needed to sleep. Tonight was sure to be chuck full of unpleasantness. And even though I was learning to thoroughly enjoying kicking some bad guy a-, at some point you had to call it a night. And that was precisely what I wasn't doing right now. I rubbed my forehead where the headache that began when Kato set eyes on Chou, set in a little harder. I worried about my partner. He was too close to this. To close to everything. He had history with the guy he wasn't telling me about. He went and tried to take him out alone as the Hornet's man and failed miserably enough to trash one of the nearly indestructible Black Beautys.

Worry for him was keeping me up. And me inwardly laughing at how the hot-momma dressed Lenore Case doused him with her drink the night before.

"Britt."

My eyes flicked open. The light in the corner was on. Kato was standing beside the bed in his black chauffer outfit. His hat was already on. His mask sitting up on its brim. He was adjusting his gloves over his fingers, stretching each one at a time.

I sat up and swung my legs over the bed. My shoes were there waiting beside my green overcoat, hat, and mask. It was going to be another long day. As I slipped my shoes on and straightened my shirt I addressed Kato.

"You going to be all right with this?" I asked.

I didn't look at him. But I could feel the hard stair boring through the back of my head.

"I'm fine." He said with a hint of edge I hadn't heard from him in a while. "Don't be such a wimp about this." he said.

I stood, shrugging on my jacket, setting my hat on my head and fixing my mask. "Look. I don't want whatever's stuck in your head affecting us tonight, all right? This Achou guy is dangerous—"

"Chou." Kato corrected, the same edge in his voice. "And everyone we go up against is dangerous."

"What I'm saying is, if you can't keep your head on straight, stay in the car. Ok? Shoot your rockets or something. As long as you don't hit me I'm fine if you blow the whole tanker up. You're not telling me crap. I get it. I don't like it, but I'm not asking. Just don't get me killed because your being stubborn all right?"

"Fine." He said curtly, heading out the door.

I followed him out, mentally preparing for what lay ahead. I didn't want this. Not like this. There had to be something I could do to amend this situation. Something. Anything. We couldn't go into battle like this. Nothing good would come of it.

Kato's grudge was putting us both in danger.

**Los Angeles Harbor, Thursday 3:56 am**

I took up position at the top of a stack of shipping containers four high and seven across. The black beauty I could just see tucked away at the end of the row of containers. Kato, as far as I knew, was still behind the wheel. His itchy trigger figure on every firing switch he had stuffed into the Chrysler. At least he stayed in the car-so far. I, for some crazy reason, didn't feel like being blown up by my own henchman this morning.

God. It was morning. Some way to spend my life, stuck up on a stack of shipping containers waiting for international drug runners and all around state-of-the-art killers walk into my kinda trap. I cleared the fogginess of my sleep-deprived mind with a yawn and kept waiting.

According to the note Case lifted from Pulver (and then cleverly dropped outside his car again) the deal was going down any time now. Pulver, as Parker turned up, was the undercover drug king pin that muscled his way into LA from San Diego about three months after Chevnofsky was bumped off. Not only did he take over the drugs. He took on the gun shipments too. An alliance with Chou was just the next natural step.

Awesome. I love drugs and guns in the middle of the morning at an abandoned dock with Kato's itchy trigger finger chillin' in the Black Beauty.

I silenced these panicky thoughts. They were making me a little paranoid. Not to mention disturbed. I kept my eyes in my binoculars and watched as, at last, the players started rolling into position. First came the blue Pontiac containing Pulver. Next Chou came popping out of the shadows between two rows of shipping crates. Pulver had a briefcase, supposedly full of cash. Chou had about four cronies behind him. Pulver had six. Odds weren't too badly stacked for Kato and me. We've handled more than this in the past.

I picked up my sniper rifle. I planned to aim high and scatter them. Then I'd set off the pre-placed flash bombs on the left and right of the group. When they split up and ran, I'd already be on the ground and moving. I'd take out whoever I could with my gas gun, and Kato would pepper them to ribbons.

At least, that was the plan. It was the plan after I fired the first ten shots. It was the plan when the flash bombs went off. It was the plan when the men returned fire to my secret position. As I shimmied down the back of the containers and rushed to my position on the ground, I couldn't help the momentary scuffles with men on the ground. I met four behind the shipping containers. I knocked two out with the gas gun. The other to I had to muscle with brute force. I wasn't as skilled as Kato, though he'd been teaching me more ways to be on the offensive. It took longer then I liked to kick one guy square between the legs, then knee him in the forehead as he doubled over. The last guy pulled a gun. I lifted it into the air then landed a sucker punch to his abs, crossed a right hook into his jaw and landed a thick kick into his sternum.

I rushed around to the front of the shipping container and assessed the situation. Pulver and his goons were holed up a few rows down and shooting wildly wherever they saw the potential for a gun muzzle. As for Chou he was directly across from me. A black shadow was floating gracefully between his hired men. I knew almost as soon as I saw the shadow that it was Kato. He hadn't stayed. He wasn't providing me any cover fire. My gas gun wouldn't reach where Pulver's men were firing from and my sniper rifle was out of bullets. But they definitely could reach me. I had seconds to move and no time to think.

I made a run for it. I had to get to Kato. I had to save him from another big screw up. I sprinted across the open lot, the gun shots mirroring my every footfall as I ran. Several holes pierced right through my overcoat as I ran but I made it to Chou's men unscathed. Kato was on the ground being pummeled by three men at once. I gassed one of them and kicked another in the ribs, launching him up and off Kato's prone form. Kato took care of the third. He was sore looking, but otherwise all right. Until, that is, Chou pulled out a gun.

Whatever had crawled up Kato's butt was officially driving me insane. I didn't want to grab him by the shoulder. I didn't want to pull him off balance and throw him at the metal wall behind us. And I certainly didn't want to take a bullet in the gut for him.

But I did.

Momentum more than strength pushed me forward into Chou. I hit him once across the chin with my gun, then again in the side of the head with my free hand. I grabbed for his gun and drove him into another metal wall with my shoulder.

Kato couldn't help me if he wanted to. Pulver's men found the excitement soon enough. As I tangled with Chou, he was busy eradicating any extra problems the drug dealer could cause.

I had Chou in a sleeper hold for nearly a minute as he beat my kidneys with his elbows, slammed me back into the shipping container, and found the corner of something to break me on, before he finely went down. It was a good thing for me. I was going down too.

One of Chou's men came around. He tried extracting me from his leader. He did a good job of it. A shotgun butt swung wildly and caught me square. Stars shot like fireworks through my brain.

"Hornet!" Kato exclaimed from someplace distant.

I felt him pick me up. I mumbled something about the drugs. About Pulver and Chou. Sirens were going off like angry dogs in the distance. In a few moments the familiar leather smell of the Black Beauty reached my nostrils. My body slipped against its long back seat. Kato hovered over me.

"Is it bad?" Kato asked, a desperation in his voice. "Brit? Can you hear me at all?"

I moaned in response, my busted kidneys not allowing a proper answer. I know I was shot somewhere in my abdomen. But with the pain of that and the many desperate elbows it was impossible to tell how badly. I didn't waist anytime in deciding to pass out and leave the idea of a hospital run cover story to Kato.

**Location Unknown, Day Unknown, Time (guess what people) Unknown**

I woke up from what felt like a thirty day binge on Crown Royal and Smirnoff. Which is kind of weird since I never did that exactly. I think it was Bacardi and Grey Goose. Anyway—

I felt like crap. A big, honking, pile of steaming dog crap. Not just any dog though. A Great Dane sized dog crap stuffed into a giant paper bag then lit on fire on my bedroom carpet. Which brings up another good point. Why do people say "big honking" it doesn't seem to make much sense to me now that I'm sitting here thinking about it.

I tried to get more comfortable in whatever bed/chair/floor I was on. I'm not sure why I didn't think until now to open my eyes, but my body was saying something like, "No, Britt, go back to sleep, don't wake up until next year. Or at least another four weeks". I sort of felt like listening to it too but a worrying conclusion came to mind: was Kato putting me in diapers again?

My eyes flipped open. The room was dark and warm. My body ached everywhere, making it difficult to sit up and look around at where I was. I think it's my room. I think I'm in my sofa bed. I see the similar IV set next to my right arm. Kato may have set it up or whatever doctor he came up with. Again I feel the stinging gut punch that took my breath away. I hissed through my teeth and doubled over.

Fifteen coffee cups complete with their little saucer plates were stacked in an elegant arrangement on my bedside table beside the IV line. So, I was out for fifteen days. That's not too bad if I WASN'T the head of a newspaper. How did Kato play this one off? Where was Case? Did he tell anyone?

I had to get out of that bed. Something about it was making me sick. I looked through the stack of cups for the freshest one. They were all cold. So, Kato hadn't brought up today's yet. I looked around to find a clock, but the one I had I smashed over the man's head about a year ago during our first real duel against each other. Next I looked for my cell phone. No luck there. It was plugged into its charger about ten feet away and I was not going that far yet. I did find the remote control to the new plasma screen I had installed after Kato broke the other one over my head (again, during said fight). The volume was on full blast and eerily painful. I hit the mute button faster than I could text (impressive) and waited for my ear drums to calm down and my eyes to adjust to the fresh light.

Fifteen cups minus today's made it Saturday I think. I looked for the nearest news channel to discover it was around seven in the morning. Good, Kato would be in soon if history repeated itself perpetually. Well, before he showed up I decided to check out my gunshot wound to see how it was healing up. If the one in my shoulder was any indication of heal time, I was looking at a good couple months. That sucked. I unbuttoned my sleep shirt and craned my neck to look down. At first I saw nothing but black bruises shading to green in certain spots. That's all right, I was used to that kind of abuse. What I didn't find was the bullet I know I had taken for Kato. Perhaps it was lower, or to the side. Tender as I was everywhere I could only pry for so long before I couldn't stand it any longer and left it be.

"OK, Ok, I get it. But you're still not saying anything. I need to tell them something and Mono is not going to work twice." It was Case.

"Then, how about tetanus?" came Kato's distinct accent through the door.

"I still like the bee sting idea." Parker chimed in.

I groaned a little, not wanting to deal with their bickering as the first order of the morning. If I wanted that I'd go to the office and have a sit down with the layout team and Axford. The door opened and the first tendrils of sunlight leaked in from the hallway beyond. It was odd seeing it. Like something distant and unreal.

Kato stalked in, the usual pep obviously gone out of him with days of routine. As he proceeded to steeple the coffee cups in a new order I gave him the shock of his life by reaching out and grabbing his arm. I kinda liked the theatrics and sending him reeling backwards like a scared sheep.

"Br—Britt! You're—you're—"

I never saw him at such a loss of words. It was a little touching.

Parker and Case must have heard because soon as they could they were standing over me. Case was teary eyed. Parker clapped my shoulder gently. Kato was still standing there, threatening to drop my cup off coffee he was shaking so badly.

I reached a hand out for it and he thankfully gave it up before it did drop.

"So, how you feeling?" Parker asked.

I thought about illustrating my dog crap montage from earlier but thought against it. "Not that great. Hey, didn't I get shot?"

Kato nodded. He reached over to my side table and picked up my belt buckle from the tower of coffee cups. He handed it over. Well, it was one of my favorites. A white and red number that said "Cocky" on it. Now dead center on the O was an obvious bullet fragment.

"Belt saved your life, Mr. Reid." Case said, smiling a little. Her hand was massaging my hair whether she knew it or not. And I wasn't pointing it out to her.

"You took a nasty blow to the head, Reid. We were pretty worried about you." Parker said.

I sipped my coffee. A coffee that never tasted better in my life. I wondered what a straight IV diet was doing to my body and how that coffee was going to impact it. Then I looked at Kato. He hadn't really said anything to me yet. And it looked like he had something dire on his mind.

"Hey, could you guys leave us for just a second?" I asked Case and the DA. As if understanding, they didn't object, but headed right out and shut the door.

I turned the TV off and waited.

Kato was sitting in a chair across from me. His hands were folded, fingers interlaced. "Britt, I—look I was idiot. I am sorry. Chou, he was part of Tong that help destroy my family. I just, I guess I couldn't . . ." he looked down at a loss for his words.

I knew Kato was an orphan, that he grew up on the streets. But I never knew what exactly happened to his parents. If Chou was involved, I understood his want for revenge. I had the same resentment to Scanlon who murdered my father. I didn't ask what Chou had done to him, or how he was involved. I knew enough to forgive Kato for being an idiot. "It's all right. I get it. Just do me a favor. If anyone like that shows up again, let me know something? No more of this Lone Ranger crap. It makes things a little easier on me overall."

Kato smiled, nodded. He was obviously a little relieved that I wasn't reaming him out about the whole thing. "Guess, I owe you new belt buckle, huh?"

I nodded a little, handing over the now empty coffee cup. I dropped into my blankets again. "Yeah. That and if you ever make me have to wear diapers again, I swear I will gas you for a week. Or through you in the pool. Take your pick."

**Home, Saturday, 7:00am**.

End.

Thanks for reading! I hope you liked it. There is a serious shortage of good Green Hornet books out there. If Britt doesn't sound exactly like the movie, it was intentional. I wanted to a show a progression of some maturity on his part.

Please review!


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